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Operation Cue is a 1955 film by the U.S. Federal Civil Defense Administration about its own atomic test programme at the Atomic Energy Commission's Nevada Test Site. A reporter narrates it. She arrives the day before the shot and tours a test site built "to test the effects of an atomic blast upon the things we use in our everyday lives" (02:33). The film opens with a warning that the bomb was small by the standards of its day: "approximately 30 kilotons" (00:44), against the megatons of a hydrogen bomb.

The first half is preparation. Five kinds of house are built for the blast, and the shelters get the same care. Of the box-type shelter in a basement corner the narrator says, "This type would give more room for a family" (04:06). Then the furniture and appliance industries install the furnishings, and the families arrive: "Mannequin families supplied by private industry are to represent Mr. and Mrs. America" (07:24). On screen, workers carry stiff dummies through front doors, one hugging a mannequin woman over the threshold, another carrying a mannequin child upside down by its legs; a mannequin father and son sit in a basement shelter; a worker bends a mannequin woman onto a living-room couch in front of a television set.

Then the countdown. Television cameras wait "to bring the test into homes from coast to coast" (09:10), and the loudspeaker counts down to "Zero" (10:23). Then the film shows the blast itself: a lit room where a mannequin boy sits by the window as the blinds buckle, and a frame house that smokes, then is shoved over and blown to splinters. Hours later the observers walk through the ruins. A worker in white coveralls and a helmet opens a shelter door, and a mannequin child in a red shirt is sitting inside. The narrator's verdict: "basement shelters offered some degree of protection" (12:03).

What makes it strange now is the tone. The film is careful, practical and nearly cheerful about families, food and furniture, and the families are plastic. Near the end the reporter takes a last look at the debris: "This time it was only a test, a well-planned test, not a real attack" (14:17).